by Melissa Good
206 Melissa Good
“Oh.” The blonde brows knit. “Good surprise or bad surprise?” Kerry felt her composure returning, and she realized things were actually going pretty well. Dar wasn’t upset about…things…at all.
Suddenly serious pale blue eyes captured hers. “A very good surprise, Kerry. It’s been a very long time since I’ve felt so comfortable with someone. I don’t make friends easily.”
Kerry felt herself drowning in that intense regard, and she reached out in pure reflex, curling her fingers around Dar’s as though it were the most natural thing in the world. “I’m glad,” she replied simply, giving the hand a squeeze. They gazed into each other’s eyes, and Kerry felt her heart start to pound a little faster.
A knock on the door broke the tableau, and Dar dropped her eyes, a tiny smile playing around her lips. “That’d be breakfast, I guess.”
“Yep.” Kerry released her hand, and stood, running her fingers through her hair as she padded to the door and peeked through the eyehole. “I hope you’re hungry. I think I over-ordered.”
White teeth flashed in a grin. “Starving.” She got up and checked the time. Eight thirty. “Let’s eat, then get moving. I’ll fill you in on the plan while we eat.”
THE GLASS-WALLED conference room seemed warmer to Kerry as she entered behind Dar’s tall form and closed the door after her. A large LCD
presentation screen had been added to the far wall, and the IBM team looked, if nothing else, smug. She put her laptop and a folder down next to John, then seated herself, giving him a reassuring smile. “Hello.”
“Hi.” He leaned closer. “Did you get the proposal?”
She nodded and tapped her folder, watching Dar saunter to the first seat nearest the front of the room and sit down.
“The IBM group was working all night. They’ve got this whole whiz-bang presentation to do. I’m a little concerned,” the account team leader whispered. “What do we have, other than the paper?”
“Shhh.” Kerry nodded to the far door, where Michelle and her retinue were entering. “Dar has something planned.” She eyed the Disney executive, surprised when the woman scanned the room and let her gaze rest on Kerry’s face for a long moment before drifting off . I must be sunburned, she realized ruefully. Oh well. She took a quick look at Dar’s face, realizing the darker-skinned woman didn’t show the pink that she did.
“Well.” Michelle put down a leather-covered folder and drummed her immaculately painted nails on it. “Thank you all for being prompt.” She looked first at Jerry, then at Dar, who had slipped off her jacket and was seated casually, her weight resting on her elbows. She had chosen to wear a sleeveless, low-necked white cotton shirt, and she looked cool and comfortable, in direct contrast to the men, with their tight ties and buttoned collars.
“It’s a pity you were tied up last night, Dar, Jerry and I had some wonderful conversation.” Michelle’s eyes were sharp, and she let a brief, thin smile edge her lips.
Tropical Storm 207
Dar didn’t even twitch. She just returned the smile with a lazy one of her own. “Sorry I missed it. Hope you had as good a time as I did.” Suddenly, she was glad she’d turned down the Disney exec. It was obvious she was enjoying the liberal fawning of the bidding process, and Dar felt a quiet satisfaction that she hadn’t stooped to that. Of course, it also might mean she’d dropped the ball and lost the account. She hated losing. It didn’t happen often, and if she lost this one, knowing she could have sewn it up was going to hurt, in more ways than one.
Kerry shifted a little in her seat and cleared her throat.
Or would it? Dar knew herself to be skirting a chasm she’d never anticipated and she wondered just how much it would take to simply push her over that edge.
“Well, let’s get started.” Michelle had obviously decided she wasn’t going to get a rise out of Dar, so she sat down. “I believe we have presentations from both teams?”
Jerry leaned back and laced his fingers over his stomach. “Ladies first.”
He smiled sweetly at Dar.
She shrugged and gave him an amused look. “Okay, if you insist, you go right ahead.”
Against her will, Michelle bit the inside of her lip and looked down, then cleared her throat. “Jerry, go on so we won’t be here all day.”
His face reddened, but he complied, laying out his materials and launching into his presentation, using the display screen to illustrate how they would realign networks and put servers in place. It was interesting, and Dar reflected that he really did know what he was doing. It took forty-five minutes, though, and she caught Michelle peeking at her watch before he finished. She nodded quietly to herself. A good, solid presentation, worthy of the reputation of his company and probably a very competitive bid. Jerry wanted this; the publicity alone was worth low-balling the price.
Michelle nodded at him as he finished. “Thank you. That was very comprehensive.” She paused, then turned and looked at Dar, raising a ginger-colored eyebrow in question.
Dar remained seated and leaned back, resting her weight on the arms of the chair. “Kerry?” She motioned the younger woman forward with a jerk of her head. That was a surprise. Even her own people expected her to do the presentation; certainly Michelle had.
Kerry took a breath, then stood and picked up her laptop, tucking it under her arm and walking to the front of the room. She efficiently disconnected the display screen and plugged into her external video port, then booted up the laptop and requested a cellular connection to their network. She glanced up as it was connecting. “This was an interesting scenario to develop a solution for,” she commented. “Because in order for an interactive system to work, you have to make it easy to use and complex in its design all at the same time.”
She brought up a network diagram, setting counters and narrowing the focus. “This is your current data communications network.” She started the monitors running “You can see, your current utilization runs into bottlenecks here and here, mostly because of the bandwidth requirements, especially in 208 Melissa Good the video link.”
Dar watched Michelle’s face as the smaller woman leaned forward, peering at the live data with interest.
“So, to open the pipeline, we’d bring in trunk circuits here and here.”
Kerry had another screen open, and she typed several rapid-fire commands, which suddenly made the monitors jump and flutter. “Like that.”
Michelle’s brows creased. “Did you just…do it?”
“Mmm-hmm,” Kerry acknowledged, with a gentle smile. “See how that smoothes the bottlenecks? You get better through-put.” She brought up another screen, this one an actual link into the Disney reservations system.
“We analyzed the application you were running as well. It provides a lot of information, but it’s slow, and it’s very layered, making people go through an intensive drill before they get where they want to go.” She clicked again. “Our web design division suggests this as a replacement. You can see it’s a three-dimensional representation of one of your parks, and to get where you want to go, the touch screen technology is used, like this…” She tapped with her mouse key, and the scene shifted, then shifted again to display the castle in the Magic Kingdom.
“Nice,” Michelle murmured.
“Um, no.” Kerry tapped again, at the graphically drawn doors. “This is nice.” The doors opened, and she was given a menu of options. “To see the menus, you go here.” She showed it. “Then if you want to make a reservation, you go here.” The screen was replaced with an overhead shot of the restaurant, complete with tables. “You can pick your time, and it will show what tables are available.” She clicked, and a small screen popped up. “You type your name in, and there you are.” The table was now labeled Mickey Mouse.
The entire room was focused on Kerry now, and she glanced past them to a pair of warm, sparkling blue eyes, one of which winked at her. “But this is a nice addition,” she went on, accepting the reservation. “It gives
you the option to leave a pager number, here, so you can be reminded of your reservation, and so the restaurant staff can get hold of you if there’s a change.” She typed in a number, and clicked Okay, then paused expectantly.
Seconds later, a soft beeping sounded from across the room, and Dar held up her pager, then reset it.
“That’s…incredible.” Michelle sat back. “But what kind of bandwidth problems are we talking about? That program must be huge.”
Kerry met her gaze and smiled. “Want to find out?” she inquired. “We threw this on two of our Alpha servers, and wrote a little stress-testing program.” She clicked, displaying a network analyzer in one corner, then started the program with a different session. “See? It’s not that big, really, since we cache the screens like the seat maps locally, and we cut way down on the video traffic. You only need to talk to a reservationist if you can’t figure something out, or if you want to make special arrangements. There’s parameters you can specify, like a cutoff on party size, so someone won’t put in for a party of thirty or something.”
She stopped talking and gazed out at them. “Any questions?” Kerry glanced around the room, then let her eyes settle on Michelle. “We Tropical Storm 209
downloaded the PDF maps from your website, and cross-referenced them to the location database that’s up there, then ran it all through a three-D modeler attached to a back-end datafile that stores all the information.” She paused for Michelle’s nod of understanding. “Beyond that, it was mostly customizing it to your business style, which Dar and I had an opportunity to evaluate the past two days.”
Dar’s brow lifted unobtrusively. That…was impressive and unprompted.
Kerry had somehow clued in to the fact that Michelle was miffed that she’d spent the night wandering the park instead of at dinner with her, and had turned a purely personal motive into a compelling business one. Nice. Very nice. She caught the younger woman’s eyes and smiled appreciatively, noting the faint blush that colored Kerry’s cheeks.
“No, I…” Michelle turned to Dar, with a little incredulous shake of her head. “Can I speak to you in private for a moment?”
Gotcha. “Sure,” Dar replied amiably, as she stood up and motioned for Michelle to precede her. They slipped out the door in the rear, into a small antechamber with soft ferns and a smoked glass skylight.
The redhead turned to face her. “I didn’t expect that.”
Dar smiled. “I told you I make things happen. Diagrams and grids are fine, but I thought you wanted to see an end result, not promises.”
A slow nod, and then the woman’s eyes lazily caressed her. “So, did you have fun last night?”
“More than you did, I bet.” Dar chuckled. “I’ve had dinner with Jerry.”
Michelle tried without much success to wipe a smile off her face. “He doesn’t have much good to say about you, I’ll tell you that.” She gazed up at the taller woman. “I spent most of the night hearing about how you’d screw me over.”
“Not my style,” she disagreed. “We screw up sometimes, just like everyone else does, but we don’t go out looking for victims.” Now she let her own eyes wander, letting a little of her admittedly seductive side surface. “But I don’t think you’re the victim type anyway.”
Michelle blinked, then she stepped back a little, and folded her arms. “I’ll take that as a compliment. That was a nice presentation. Your little protégée knows her stuff.” A cynical look entered her eyes. “Here I thought she was just a bit of fluff you brought with you.”
“Kerry’s not a bit of anything,” Dar replied, more sharply than she’d intended.
The smaller woman’s lips tensed, then she chuckled softly. “Ah, so you do have the rare soft spot. Well, no offense meant, Dar. I like the fact that you stand up for your people.” She sighed. “That’s so rare at our level. I’ve seen countless situations where a subordinate is mostly used for putting blame on, but I don’t think you’re that type.”
“No,” Dar replied honestly.
“And I don’t think you’re the kind of person who lies for no reason. So, were you really casing the joint last night?” Michelle gazed at her, a half smile on her face.
“I was keeping a promise,” Dar answered quietly. “And no, it wasn’t business-related.”
210 Melissa Good The shorter woman leaned back against a sideboard and crossed her arms. “Interesting, and that was more important to you than locking up this bid?” she asked. “If that’s the case, I’m not sure we can do business, Ms.
Roberts.”
Dar stepped forward, straightening to her full height and pinning Michelle with pale blue eyes. “If that’s how you base your business decisions, then I won’t regret losing the contract,” she said softly. “Are we done?”
Without a word, Michelle gestured back towards the door, and they reentered the meeting room, where Kerry had disconnected her laptop and resumed her seat next to John.
“Excuse me for a moment.” Michelle picked up both proposals and left the room. This time the hounds stayed behind, glancing at everyone with suspicious eyes.
Dar sat down next to Kerry, putting her elbows on the arms of her chair and steepling her fingers before her face. She could feel the eyes of the entire room on her, and it was a struggle to keep her face calm and relaxed. I think I blew this one, she admitted quietly to herself. If I was going to play her game, I should have played it all the way, not backed off. Damn, I think I need more than a stupid vacation. I need to get my head back on straight and remember what the hell my job is. A certain grimness settled over her. Not spend time running around a stupid park, playing games.
The door opened again, and Michelle re-entered, a thoughtful look on her face. She looked at the two proposals still grasped in her hand for a moment, then inhaled and tossed one at Jerry. “Thanks for your time.” She tossed the other at Dar. “I’ll be in touch.” Then she simply left, taking her hounds with her. Mickey Mouse smiled at them from the clock on the wall, his fingers pointing out the time, the solid ticking echoing in the shocked stillness of the room for what seemed like an endless instant. Then Dar collected herself and stood up, picking up the contract and handing it to John. “Here you go.” She let her hand fall on Kerry’s shoulder. “C’mon, we’ve got a plane to catch.”
Kerry got up and followed her quickly out of the room, across the hallway, and into the waiting elevator, which slid closed behind them, blocking the view of the glassed-in conference room.
Dar leaned back against the wall and crossed her arms, giving Kerry a cheerfully triumphant grin. In silence, the blonde woman pumped her fist down and mouthed. “Yes!” Dar poked out the tip of her tongue in response, then wiped her face of its glee as the doors opened to let them out on the ground floor. They didn’t relax until they were in the rental car, pulling out of the lot, and heading towards the airport.
“That was amazing,” Kerry gushed. “Dar, I thought for sure after those nasty comments…I never thought she’d pick us.”
The executive slowly shook her head. “Me either, to be honest. I thought I really blew this one.” She pulled out her cell phone and dialed a number from memory. “Beatrice? He in?”
“You did?” Kerry looked confused. “Wow, I thought you handled it great,” she objected. “You were by far the coolest and most prepared person in there. You didn’t even react when she tossed that packet at you, it’s like you Tropical Storm 211
expected it all along.”
“Hah!” Dar snorted, putting her fingers over the microphone on the cell.
“Good acting job.” She grinned in almost giddy relief, then took a breath.
“Alastair?” A pause. “Done deal.” She held the phone away from her ear as various whooping and squawking noises issued from it, chuckling as she waited for the racket to die down. “Yeah, about fifteen minutes ago … No, I’m on my way to the airport, John has the details.”
“Dar, you are a goddess.” Alastair’s voice crackled through th
e connection. “I’m sending you something for this, and you better the hell not turn it down, or I’m coming down there personally and making sure you don’t, got me?”
“Wasn’t just me, Alastair,” Dar objected. “The website team, Mark, the docs people, and especially my assistant Kerry, who gave the proposal, had a big part in it.” She caught a blush out of the corner of her eye, and gave the blonde a playful nudge with her elbow.
“You can take care of them, I’m going to take care of you,” the cheerful voice replied. “Let me go. That’s John on the other line, probably needing his pants dry cleaned. Bye Dar, God bless you.”
Dar folded the phone and tucked it into its belt holder, then exhaled.
She’d gotten lucky, all right. Big time. Michelle had made her decision based on business reasons, though Dar suspected it had been a close thing. She also suspected she hadn’t heard the last from Ms. Graver. But for right now, it was done, and she was headed home. “Hope he doesn’t send me caviar again,” she joked wryly.
“I’m glad it all worked out. It was nice of you to say everyone else was involved,” Kerry commented with a smile.
“You were,” Dar said. “I didn’t do a damn thing other than throw a few smart-ass comments around and pick the right people to do the right thing for me.” She pointed at Kerry without taking her eyes off the road. “You did a sharp as hell demo, my friend. You had them in the palm of your hand.”
Now Kerry did blush, blinking with a mildly bemused look on her face.
“Um, thanks,” she stammered softly. “Glad I did all right. But it was your plan, Dar. When everything works, it’s easy to show it off, you know?”
Dar grinned. “I know. So we all did good,” she confided, as she drove past an elaborate water tower. “Hey, there’s MGM.”
“Ooo.” Kerry peeked at it. “Next time, I wanted to do the Tower of Terror.”
Dar checked her watch, then glanced at the park, then glanced at Kerry’s nose-pressed-against-the-glass posture and considered. “Well…” She turned into the left lane, then waited for traffic to slow. “There’s later flights.”
